This new incarnation is called Game Time ID, or in-depth if you want to get a little wild. This week I'll be sharing my thoughts on the time I've spent with Persona 4 Arena with you. Will this new iteration of Game Time stick around? I don't really know, but let's find out together.
It's Game Time!
When I first heard that there was going to be a Persona 4 fighting game I didn't really know what to think. My skepticism subsided as soon as I heard it was being developed by Ark System Works. I love Persona, and I love Blazblue as well as Guilty Gear, so Persona 4 Arena naturally started to sound like a great idea. Persona 3 and 4 characters in a fast paced anime fighter? I was ready to take the plunge into whatever AKSYS was going to offer me.
This past Tuesday Persona 4 Arena was released in America and I have barely stopped playing it since.
Round 1...FIGHT!
I'll admit I went into Persona 4 Arena expecting it to be Blazblue with a Persona skin over it, but that definitely isn't the case. Sure, it's still a fast anime fighter with a bunch of odd systems thrown on top of it, but it doesn't feel the same to me at all. For starters it's much more accessible.
Everyone wants to do a cool looking combo when they're playing a fighting game, but it's not always super easy to pull off. In P4A they make sure that you can do at least one. By pressing square repeatedly you can do a pre-set auto combo, which is actually pretty good. At first it takes a while to get used to that concept, but after a while it becomes an integral part of the game. Another option good for beginners is pushing L1. It will do your DP attack, which is almost always invincible on start-up and it happens instantly. For those of you who don't know what that means, it's basically a move that makes you invincible while it's starting and it happens instantly. It comes in handy, but it is often abused. It can easily be overcome once you know what to look for.
I know that when some people hear the words auto, or easily accessible in conjunction with fighting games they cringe. However, those things are not at odds with the skill level that can be achieved in this game. Sure it's easier than most AKSYS games to get into, but it can get insane pretty quickly. If you want to practice up and do some super long combo that takes away half your opponents health then you can still do that. What I'm saying is that you'll probably get decimated during online play at some point unless you practice up on your Persona skills.
 |
| This is Mitsuru's DP. AKA the bane of my existence. |
P4A controls slightly different than other AKSYS fighting games and I guess any other fighting game except Jojo's Bizzare Adventure. That's because each character in the game is a Persona user (Kind of like Stands in Jojo). Everyone has a normal and a heavy attack with their weapon, but they also have a normal and heavy attack with their Persona's. AKSYS characters tend to have a lot of variety, but because each character has both a Persona and a weapon this game seems to stand out even more.
All special moves in the game are done using one or two quarter turns forward or back. Some of Mitsuru's moves need to be charged, but she's an exception. This makes everything relatively simple to pull off as opposed to the 360 degree rotations and half circles these kinds of games often get crazy with.
I could go on for a good long while about all the other crazy systems this game has going on. In fact most characters have some special bar or meter involved with their moves. However, I'll settle for describing for a few of the overall systems. The burst from Blazblue makes a return, but with an interesting variation. If you're in a combo you can press square, triangle, and circle at the same time to burst out of the attack. Once you burst a B will slowly start to charge up underneath your characters health meter. If it refills you can burst once again. In a Persona reference you can also burst in order to cancel your own moves to continue on a combo. This is called one more burst, which is a reference to the one more attack you get in Persona when you attack an enemies weakness.
 |
| There are 13 characters in P4A and they're all unique. |
Another reference to Persona is the all out attack. Your character will rush towards the enemy and if they hit you'll enter a cartoon-like scuffle. Mashing buttons will increase the damage, but when you push triangle you can launch the enemy into the air. This allows for some pretty good combos and it's a reference to the source material, so it's doubly cool.
P4A plays great. Like all AKSYS games the animation is outstanding and the movement flows so nicely. Everything happens super fast and still controls great.
Story Mode
I come to the Persona series for it's strong characters and plot lines, so I was naturally excited for the story mode in Persona 4 Arena. Like Blazblue P4A takes the visual novel approach to story telling. P4A leans much more heavily on the novel part of visual novel. I'm not kidding, it's like reading a novel. It's actually to the point where there is too much text to read.
The story takes place two short months after the Story of Persona 4. The main character Yu Narukami has come back to Inaba for Golden Week. As you can imagine things don't exactly go as planned and everyone ends up in the TV world again. The midnight channel started airing again and all of the playable characters from Persona 4 were featured on it. For some reason they were all said to be taking part in a tournament, which is what ends up happening in the TV world.
 |
| They're all ready to take on the P-1 Grand Prix. |
This is where the problem I have with the story mode comes into play. It's only been two months since the events of Persona 4. Not a whole lot has changed, so they have to rely heavily on the use of internal monologues for each character. As events happen text will load up the screen with each individual story characters thoughts. Have you ever wanted to get inside Chie's steak filled mind? Well now is your chance! These internal thoughts are broken up by a whole lot of voiced dialogue and around six fights per story.
That sounds pretty awesome right? Well, it starts to grate on you. As interesting as each character's internal thoughts are there are only so many times a different take on the exact same situation can be exciting. Each character goes through four fights in the P-1 Grand Prix, and then there are three fights after that, which I don't want to spoil. The problem is that the same thing happens every single time. There are some slight variations, but none of them are interesting enough to go through multiple times. Blazblue gets away with this style, because the same thing is happening over and over, but it happens differently every time.
 |
| Can you handle this for around 20 hours? |
Each character's story took me around an hour and a half to complete when I was actually paying attention to what I was reading. That time inevitably sped up as I began to care less and less. Overall the story will take around twenty hours, which is huge for a fighting game. As I said though it's not exactly the most exciting thing you can do with your time, but it does have some interesting parts and there are certainly some implications about what Persona 5 could be.
I'm going to go ahead and say that if you don't have a vested interest in the Persona universe, then there is absolutely no way you should play the story mode in Persona 4 Arena. The enjoyment you'll get out of the story completely depends on how much you care about the universe.
Persona references for everyone!
Persona 4 Arena is an interesting game. It will obviously appeal to people who are invested in the Persona universe. It will also appeal to avid fighting game fans who have no knowledge of the characters and world. Then you have people like me who are fans of both and in that case the game is amazing. I honestly have no idea how people who aren't very fond of either would feel about it.
In that case I'd have to guess that it wouldn't be very great. The story would be super boring, but the fighting could still become a draw. It's odd, because a few years ago this would have been a very niche title. It was only within the past few years that the Persona franchise skyrocketed in popularity.
As common sense would dictate people who are into Persona will derive much more pleasure from this game. ATLUS made sure that this game was chock full of the stuff you want to see. It's basically made of fan service (No, not nudity). I main Yosuke and in his opening animations he falls down from a rope, and crashes his bike. People who haven't played Persona 4 would have no idea why I smile every time those animations happen. It's little things like that, that make this game so special to me. It feels like ATLUS is really in touch with it's fans. AKSYS translated that love and made an amazing game.
This kind of game doesn't normally turn out as well as P4A. Everyone should check it out, unless of course you don't like the Persona franchise, or fighting games. In which case you would be CRAZY!
-Manny
No comments:
Post a Comment